Peter Mendoza, JD Cullum, Ann Noble and Brian Kim McCormick (Photo by Jenny Graham)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Antaeus Theater Company
Through March 11
RECOMMENDED
How does one redress the essential weirdness of The Winter’s Tale? It’s a question that has plagued theatrical interpreters for generations. Probably Shakespeare’s most problematic “problem play,” Tale vaults vertiginously between the psychologically incise and the outlandishly comical before culminating in one of the most bizarre endings in all of Shakespeare.
I have seen the play before, but when I experienced director Elizabeth Swain’s richly comprehensible staging at Antaeus Theatre, I felt as if I were seeing it for the first time.
At the heart of the action is the monstrously jealous monarch Leontes, King of Sicilia (Adam J. Smith), whose lifelong friend, King Polixenes of Bohemia (Ned Mochel), is visiting his court. When Leontes suspects his blameless and prominently pregnant queen, Hermione (Kaci Hamilton), of an adulterous liaison with Polixenes, he becomes enraged beyond all reason. Impervious to the pleas of his adviser Camillo (Christopher Cappiello), he orders Camillo to poison his guest.
Appalled by his task, Camillo warns Polixenes of his peril, and the two flee to Bohemia — a departure that Leontes construes as confirmation of guilt. He then proceeds to throw the innocent Hermione into prison, where she gives birth to a daughter. Deaf to the remonstrances of Hermione’s intrepid friend Paulina (Ann Noble), who urges Leontes to acknowledge his daughter and free his wife, Leontes callously orders Paulina’s husband, Antigonus (Brian Kim McCormick), to take the baby to a remote isle and leave it for dead. Antigonus dumps the infant, after which he is chased and eaten by a bear (giving rise to Shakespeare’s comically concise stage direction, “Exit, pursued by a bear.”)
There’s much more ado than that in the play’s first half, during which Leontes, stricken by misfortune in short order, learns that both his wife and son are dead and collapses into an agony of guilt and self-recrimination.
The second half opens in a much lighter mode, as the somber and dire events of the first half transition into Elizabethan slapstick, with slack-jawed rustics cavorting merrily. So much buffoonery abounds that you’re apt to get whiplash adjusting to the sudden change in tone.
The crux here is that Polixenes’s son and heir Florizel (Peter Mendoza) has secretly wooed the beautiful Perdita (Shannon Lee Clair), supposedly the daughter of an elderly shepherd (Paul Eiding). Dismayed that his son would plight his troth to someone so far beneath his station, Polixenes explodes in a killing rage.
Faced with death and disinheritance, the two young lovers exit, pursued by Polixenes. All wind up in Sicilia, where much will be revealed. Surprise! Perdita is Leontes’s lost child, who is of royal birth and thereby worthy of Florizel’s suit. And surprise again! Hermione is not so dead after all. Posing as a statue (we told you the ending was bizarre), she comes to life and reunites with her newfound daughter and her penitent spouse.
As can be inferred from this summary, the play, unless skillfully handled, can come across as confusing and unlikely. Yet Swain’s staging is not only coherent but deceptively simple. She adopts the canny tactic of having her actors occasionally, subtly face the audience to deliver lines— a subtle breaking of the fourth wall that keeps us emotionally invested in the action. And it doesn’t hurt that she has assembled a marvelous cast, many of them Antaeus regulars, who are, from the largest roles down to the lesser characters, simply superb.
Sliding curtains suffice for Frederica Nascimento’s stripped-down set, which is very much in keeping with Swain’s markedly unshowy staging. Carolyn Mazuca’s costumes alternate between the overly glitzy — glittering togs that seem more fitting to a Michael’s craft store than to period attire — and the strikingly authentic. (Hermione, after giving birth in prison, appears at her trial in a dirty shift that shows the wet spots of her interrupted breast feeding, a particularly poignant touch.)
Among the uniformly adept cast, Smith is especially noteworthy as paranoiac King Leontes. Tortured, twitchy, and formidable, Smith allows us to unquestioningly accept Leontes’s lightning-fast change to paranoiac jealousy as well as his equally sudden shift into grief and repentance. In a towering turn, Hamilton brings stature and dignity to her deceptively doomed queen. And, as always, the passionate and mesmerizing Noble rivets every eye whenever she is on stage.
Antaeus Theatre Company, 110 East Broadway, Glendale. Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m. Mon., 8 p.m. Thru March 11. (818) 506-1983, www.antaeus.org two hours and 45 minutes with intermission.
